A while back, the amazing people at FuturEverything invited me to Manchester to give a talk at their festival. I had watched the festival from afar via Twitter for years, and I felt like the cool kids (Goth-cool, not preppie-cool) had finally invited me to their lunch table. Only their lunch table was Manchester Town Hall, which is a…

Just before the Christmas of 2015, a friend got in touch and said she had a really interesting opportunity for me. Early on Christmas Eve morning, she brought me to a location in the suburbs of Toronto, and introduced me to someone. This someone was warm and welcoming and gracious, and the location she’d brought me to was obviously very…

In the small hours of yesterday morning, I felt my heart squeezing inside my chest. It thudded, like in a comic book. I felt it pulsing down into my fingers. Each time I rolled over, I felt it there, leaden, like a ball bearing sliding up and down the walls of my body. Eventually I was able to go back…

ARC’s (pictured above, with a delightful blurb by none other than Mira Grant) went out a little while ago, and now the first review is in. This is great, because I’ve been having those moments when I wake up at four am and wonder if the book is actually terrible, and I was deluding myself all along. But, Publisher’s…

I imagine that elsewhere, this is described as a link round-up. Or, if it were more thoughtfully and intentionally curated, it would go into a newsletter (which I don’t have the time or focus to create; remembering to blog is hard enough). One of my bad productivity habits is keeping a bunch of tabs open, thinking that I’ll blog about…

The other day, after watching Crimson Peak for the first time, I woke up with a fully-fleshed idea for a Gothic horror story about experience design. And while the story would take place in the past, it would really be about the future. Why? Because the future itself is Gothic.

One of our favourite activities in this house — at least, one I can comfortably describe in greatest detail — is talking about how Trump could win the Presidency. This isn’t because I want Trump to win. I just see how he can. Papa Bear O’Reilly is right: Trump and Sanders are two sides of the same coin. Both are…

I used to think that I would open this post with bikini shots. You know the ones: flabby and pale and lumpy on one side, tight and tanned and toned on the other. But that would require someone to photograph me in a bikini, or a bathing suit, or my underwear, or nude, or what…

Hey, would you be interested in reading a chapter from my forthcoming Tor Books novel Company Town? If so, you’re in luck, because VICE’s tech and SF blog Motherboard has posted it for your holiday reading pleasure. “Be Seeing You” is also part of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pwning Tomorrow anthology, which features stories from (among others) Bruce Sterling, Cory…

Madeline Ashby…

She has worked with Intel Labs, the Institute for the Future, SciFutures, Nesta, Data & Society, The Atlantic Council, the ASU Center for Science and the Imagination, Changeist, and others. Her essays have appeared at BoingBoing, io9, WorldChanging, Creators Project, Arcfinity, MISC Magazine, and FutureNow. She is the author of the Machine Dynasty novels. Her novel Company Town was a Canada Reads finalist.